


so the darkness shall be the light

by Algedonic



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes-centric, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Natasha-centric, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Red Room, Timeline Shenanigans, is it comics canon?, is it mcu canon?, playing fast and loose with canon, the world may never know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:50:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4499568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Algedonic/pseuds/Algedonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is a test. Look Death in the eye, feel his hand on your throat. Fight him or embrace him, but do not show fear. Natalia's world is red and white and black, but the Soldier's eyes are blue, and his hand is warm.  </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>He looks at her, and she is not afraid. They say that he is Death, and she knows they are wrong.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	so the darkness shall be the light

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this has been an adventure. This is my first fic in the marvel fandom, the _longest_ fic I've published in _any_ fandom, and I really really enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> As usual, shoutout to [Kimmon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimmon/pseuds/Kimmon), who tirelessly hounded me to keep writing and read (and read and re-read) this monster in all of it's many forms. You're a champ. Seriously.

_O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,_  
_The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,_  
_The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,_  
_The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,_  
_Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,_  
_Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,_  
_And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha_  
_And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,_  
_And cold the sense and lost the motive of action._  
_And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,_  
_Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury._  
_I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you_  
_Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,_  
_The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed_  
_With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,_  
_And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama_  
_And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—_  
_Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations_  
_And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence_  
_And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen_  
_Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;_  
_Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—_  
_I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope_  
_For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love_  
_For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith_  
_But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting._  
_Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:_  
_So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing._  
_Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning._  
_The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,_  
_The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy_  
_Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony_  
_Of death and birth._  


_-T.S. Eliot_

* * *

  


  


When Natalia is small, she hears whispers of a man who moves like a shadow and kills like a skipped heartbeat. Natalia is small, but they have taught her what fear looks like. The slightly widened eyes, the tension in necks and shoulders, the flickering glances, as if Death is just out of sight, waiting to hear his name. There is fear in the whispers, and also reverence. 

He is a ghost story, a warning, a promise. He is a dark lullaby, a spectre in a world she is a part of but does not yet fully understand. 

They say he has no name. They say you will not hear him coming, and that it is better that way. They say that is is a mercy. They say he does not speak, does not hesitate, steals the breath from your lungs and the life from your blood like the whisper of the wind. 

He is a shadow. He is a ghost. He is Death. 

\- 

When Natalia is bigger, she presses her face and little palms to the glass and watches as the Soldier moves down the hall on the other side, dark and still and calm. She sees the men around him, sees the tension in their shoulders, their fingers on their triggers, sees the flicker of their eyes, and her heart rabbits quickly in her chest. 

She presses her fingers against the cool glass, and she does not feel fear. The Soldier's body is loose, confident in it's strength, and Natalia's breath makes a little cloud on the glass. 

She counts four knives and three guns, and the metal of his arm shines in the bright fluorescent light. The Soldier could kill all of them before they had a chance to plead, and Natalia can see that he knows this. 

Natalia knows pain, and blood, and death. Natalia knows several ways to kill a man three times her size before they realize she is a weapon. Her body knows how to fight like a dance, and her mind knows the musical silence it brings her. Natalia's world is red and white and black, but Natalia thinks she knows beauty also. 

The Soldier moves like a breath, sharp and solid and soft. Natalia follows the line of his jaw, the curve of his shoulder, the dip of his back, the strength of his legs. They say he is Death, but Natalia's heart pounds in her chest, and she thinks that they are wrong. 

\- 

Natalia knows that this is a test. The room is quiet and still and empty around her, nothing but the sound of her breath to break the silence. 

A door opens and he enters like a shadow, silent and dark. It has been years since she pressed her face to the glass, but he looks just the same. 

Her heart races but her shoulders stay loose, her gaze does not waver. Four knives, three guns, metal arm. He eyes her, assesses, circles silent around her while she watches. 

He moves quickly, like a snake or a scorpion or a bolt of lightning, closes the space between them and wraps human fingers around her throat, metal fingers around her wrist, pulls her tight against his chest. He's solid and warm and nothing at all like she supposes Death should be, and her quick small fingers find the knife at his hip and draw red blood from his forearm faster than a heartbeat. 

His palm slides up from her throat, tilts her chin back until their eyes meet. Natalia hears the drip of his blood onto the floor at their feet. 

This is a test. Look Death in the eye, feel his hand on your throat. Fight him or embrace him, but do not show fear. Natalia's world is red and white and black, but the Soldier's eyes are blue, and his hand is warm. 

He looks at her, and she is not afraid. They say that he is Death, and she knows they are wrong. 

He lets her go, presses metal fingers to the line of red on his arm, looks at it curiously. Natalia turns the blade in her hand and offers him the hilt, smear of red on her palm. 

"What is your name?" He asks her as he takes the blade, slips it back into the sheath at his side. 

"Natalia," she tells him, not allowing herself to dwell on the way he moves, the foreign twang in his voice. "What's yours?" 

His eyebrows raise, as if no one has ever thought to ask him this question before. Natalia is fascinated. They call him Death but he is a man, a beautiful living blade with light in his eyes and red blood on his fingers and Natalia is careful about wanting things, but she wants the man in front of her. Wants to know his mind and hold his secrets and earn his trust. 

"They call me-" he starts, and that is not what she wants. 

"I know what they call you," she interrupts, takes a step closer because she wants and she is not afraid. She swipes a finger through the blood on his arm and looks at it, looks at him. "They call you Death. You are not Death. What is your name?" 

He looks at her, sizes her up and studies her and she lets him, shoulders loose, eyes steady. A challenge, and a promise. She does not fear him. 

His lips quirk in a smile, dangerous and sharp and beautiful. 

"You are not like the others," he says, and she raises her eyebrows, waiting. He laughs, a light, rare thing, slides his flesh hand into her hair and presses his lips to her forehead, ducks lower and breathes his name in her ear. 

An acknowledgement, and a promise. 

\- 

Natalia's back hits the wall, head thudding dully against the wood. She grits her teeth and glares and James - _James_ , a good name, a strong name, as foreign and familiar as the man himself, now - _grins_. 

"Again." 

Again. Natalia ducks his swing, circles. She's quick, but he knows the way her body moves nearly as well as she does, and if he has weak points, she has yet to find them. 

Again. She is quick, wraps her legs around his torso, locks her ankles over his chest and her forearm across his throat. Her muscles burn and her heart races but she will not stop until he does. 

Again. She can feel the thrum of his carotid against her hot skin, and wonders how anyone could ever look at him and believe that he is Death. 

Again. She lands hard on her back, air leaving her lungs in a rush, and allows herself a moment to catch her breath. 

James peers down at her, light little smile on his face. Natalia glares because Natalia always glares, and James' smile cracks a little wider. "Tired, паучок?" 

Natalia's eyes narrow in annoyance, though her skin prickles warm with fondness. 

She never felt fondness before James. She's unsure if she likes it. 

She curses him in Russian, and he nudges her side with the toe of his boot. 

"English." 

She curses him in English, and smiles when it makes him laugh. 

\- 

When Natalia was small, there were twenty-eight. They were not her sisters, they were not her friends, but they were like her, and it was a comfort. 

When Natalia was small, there were twenty-six, and Natalia learned to exercise caution when asking questions. 

When Natalia was small, there were twenty-three, and Natalia learned that she was alone. 

When Natalia was bigger there were twenty, eighteen, sixteen, thirteen, and Natalia learned that solitude was her best defense. 

When Natalia was bigger there were eleven, eight, five, and she felt grateful for her isolation, felt pity for those who entrusted others with their functionality. 

When Natalia was grown there was only her. When Natalia was grown, there was James. Natalia did not fear him, did not fear the power under his skin or the drawl of his voice or the warmth of his body. 

James was not Death, and Natalia did not fear him. James was life, was the sun in a bleak Russian winter, was blue in a sea of red red red, and Natalia's heart raced but her gaze did not flicker. 

\- 

"What is your name?" Natalia whispers in the dark. It is cold, so cold, but the skin of James' cheek is warm under her palm, and his eyes are wide. 

Natalia does not fear him, but she fears _this_. She does not know where James goes when they aren't together, and he does not tell her. 

"They call me-" he starts, quiet, cracked rough, and Natalia's heart thuds painful in her chest. 

"I know what they call you," she breathes, threading her fingers into his hair and touching her forehead to his, "they call you Death. You are not Death. What is your name?" 

"I don't know," he chokes, fingers clutching at her arms, _"I don't know."_

\- 

_James_ , she thinks, finger steady on the trigger. Her body is a weapon, still and silent and sharp. She breathes slow, deep, times the shots with the beats of her heart - _one two three four five_ \- one round for every letter of his name. 

She can feel his warmth at her back, his breath in her hair, and feels rage burn in her blood as she releases the clip, loads another. 

"Хорошо," he says, "снова." 

She twists, glares. This is not what she wants. "English." 

His lips twist up in amusement. "You are not like the others." 

She pulls the slide, chambers a round, familiar _snick-click_ settling something in her chest. "There are no others." 

_One two three four five_ \- one round for every letter of his name. 

\- 

"Natalia." 

He moves quiet like a shadow, slips into her room in the dark and breathes her name like a plea. 

She wanted to know his mind, wanted to hold his secrets. Her heart races in her chest, and she wonders if he can hear it. 

They said he was a ghost. They said he was Death. They were wrong, and not, and Natalia learns hate. They have made him this, broken and empty and beautiful, and she thinks that together, they could kill them. They could kill them all. 

"What is your name?" She whispers, back to the cold wall as she watches him in the dark. 

His metal hand catches the moonlight as it curls into a fist. _"Natalia,"_ desperate, sharp, cuts like knives in her chest. 

_"What is your name?"_ She hisses, demands. 

His shoulders slump and his dark hair falls like a curtain between their eyes. "You know." 

"Yes," she agrees, "do you?" 

He looks up at her then, and they taught her what fear looks like. "They make me forget." 

"They call you Death," she spits, "they are _wrong. What is your name?"_

"Sergeant," he says, wavers and rattles with his breath, "Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. 32557241." 

Her breath catches. "American?" 

He frowns. "I don't remember." 

She glares, slips from her bed, backs him against the wall. "You _do."_

His hands clench and release, clench and release. His shoulders are tight and his eyes are wide. "I don't-" 

"You _do,"_ she insists. 

_"Natalia,"_ he whispers, and his eyes go far away, seeing things she can't, "there was-" he pauses, swallows, grabs at her hips, "a man. A boy? He was..." he licks his lips, brow furrowing, "I don't know. He _was_." 

"What is his name?" Natalia prompts, very quietly, and he looks at her. _They taught her what fear looks like._

His lip trembles, his fingers press bruises into her hips. "I don't _know_." 

She wraps her arms around his shaking shoulders, tugs him close and strokes his hair when he buries his face in her neck. 

"You do," she promises. He feels young and small and fragile, arms wrapped tight around her waist, and she thinks that she could kill them all. 

\- 

They could run. The sky is clear and the air is cold and the sound of the city twenty stories below is like music in her ears. 

This is a test, she knows. Walk with Death, hold it in your hands, do not blink, do not shake. Know what you are. His body is still and solid next to hers, staring unblinking through the scope of his rifle. 

It is her kill. Her first. In an hour she will move, silent and dark as a shadow, and she will steal the life from a man in his bed.She will not blink, and her hands will not shake. She knows what she is. 

Today, James speaks Russian. Today, James does not know his name. Today, James has four knives and three guns and a metal arm, and Natalia has her body and their secrets and the fire in her chest and she thinks that even if they could not kill them all, today, they could run. Today, they could exchange death for life, walk with it, hold it in their hands. 

This is a test, she knows. They could run, but Natalia is not foolish. 

"Идти," he says, quiet, and she moves. 

Silent and dark as a shadow. She does not blink. She does not shake. Her hands and the sheets are red red red, carotid artery still sluggishly leaking life as she leaves the way she came. 

She is a shadow. She is a ghost. She is Death. 

He tips her chin up with calloused fingers, sound of the city like another world, and his smile is sad. She feels shaken apart and empty, cold and echoing and apart. "молодец," he says, strokes her cheek with this thumb and presses his lips to her forehead, and the air shakes out of her lungs. "I'm here," he ducks his head, breathes into her ear like a secret, "I'm here." 

\- 

"What's it like?" Natalia asks, quiet one night like the snow blanketing the hard Russian ground. 

"Empty," James says, smoke from his cigarette curling white-grey into the night. With a lift of his chin he gestures at the sky. "Like that, when I remember. Points of light in the blackness." 

Natalia tucks herself in closer to the warmth of his body, shivers a little in satisfaction when his arm whirrs quietly and holds her tight. 

"Do you remember?" Natalia asks, and James shrugs. 

"My name," he says, "a boy. Too thin. His breath rattled in the cold. Blood, and pain, and cold. Wanting. I think..." James sighs, flicks his cigarette off the roof and lights another. "I think he was the only good thing about me, and then they took him, and this is all that's left." 

"It's not true," Natalia says, fierce. James is good. James seems like the _only_ good thing, sometimes. "You are good. They can't take that, or him, or _you_." 

He smiles down at her, sadly. "Oh, Natalia," he sighs, holds her close, presses a kiss to her temple. 

"They _can't_ ," Natalia insists, stubborn, and James just shakes his head, fond. 

"Okay. Okay." 

\- 

Natalia remembers ballet. Remember training until her feet bled, until her legs gave out. Remembers how to pull her hair into the perfect bun, not a strand out of place, remembers stretching stretching stretching, muscles burning, moving, balance. Remembers with everything, remembers every moment, remembers feeling that her body couldn't possibly take any more, remember how her mind sang when it did. 

She remembers, and yet. 

She thinks she should remember him, knows she should, knows she _knows_ him. 

"Oh, _Natalia_ ," he breathes, and she can _hear_ his heart breaking in his voice. It confuses her. He has a metal hand, and it grinds a little when he closes it into a fist. 

She remembers. Something. A fable, from her childhood. She doesn't remember where she first heard it, but it makes her heart race, although she is not afraid. 

"What is my name?" he asks, and Natalia's brow furrows. He has no name. 

"They call you-" 

"I know what they call me," he spits, angry, metal fist groaning in protest, "what is my _name_?" 

She _remembers_ this, she- 

Her head feels like it's splitting, memories like knives. She _remembers_ , and she chokes on it, fingers clutching at her head against the pain. 

She wonders if this is what it feels like for James, every time he claws back a piece of himself from the blackness. She thinks she is crying. 

_"James,"_ she chokes, and he's there, flesh hand gentle in her hair. 

"It's okay, it's okay," he whispers, lets her cling to him and holds her back just as tight, "it's okay. I'm here. You're okay." 

She's not. They're not. She tucks her face into his shoulder and cries and cries and cries, and he lets her. 

\- 

Sometimes James speaks Russian. Sometimes Natalia remembers ballet. Sometimes the path between them is dark, black black black but solid under their feet, and they follow it blindly until they find each other in the middle. 

\- 

Today, James remembers his name. 

Today, Natalia knows that she studied many things, and that ballet was not one of them. 

She has a new pink scar on her abdomen, and James traces it lightly with his metal fingertips. 

"Graduation present," Natalia explains, and wonders if she should feel sad about this. 

James' eyes burn as he looks up at her, furious and protective. He blows out a breath and touches his lips to the scar. His hair is very soft between her fingers. 

"Steve," he says, whispers, and then stills. 

Natalia doesn't move, and neither does James. He stares at the scar and breathes fast and Natalia says his name, curious, trying to offer him something solid in the darkness. 

He looks up at her and his eyes are very wide and very young and very scared. Natalia's heart beats faster. 

_"Steve,"_ he says, again, confident, "Steve Rogers. His name was _Steve_." 

"Oh," Natalia breathes, _"oh."_

James pushes himself up, clutches at her shoulders. "We should go. We need to go." 

Natalia's heart _races_. "James-" 

He ducks down and presses his lips to hers, breathes terrifying, beautiful hope into her ear. "We could kill them," he promises, "we could kill them all. We could _run_." 

He looks at her, waits, and she looks back at him. His hair is very soft between her fingers, and his lips are very soft under her own. 

"We could run," she agrees, and his grin is like springtime. 

\- 

Natalia hears James laugh for the first time in Prague. Oh, she's heard him chuckle, before, smirk and snort and tamp down on sad broken heavings of his chest, but not _this_. This lights up his whole face, head tilted back and clutching at his belly, and it's maybe the most beautiful thing she's ever heard. 

He reels her in and kisses her forehead and calls her _Natasha_ , and she smiles with him and wraps her arms around his waist and almost, just for one moment, lets herself believe that they could have this. The chill in her bones recedes with every kilometer they put between them and Russia, and hope feels like a balloon in her chest. 

\- 

In Paris, everything is red red red. 

Black until Moscow, black again until a room with a chair with leather straps. James fights until they strap him down, and then he screams. 

Natalia does not cry. They let him up seconds minutes hours later, lead him dead-eyed and docile to a tank in the corner, and Natalia does not cry. She remembers Prague, remembers Paris, and vows to herself that somewhere, somehow, she will remember this too. 

\- 

Natalia remembers ballet, remembers hours, days, dancing until her feet bled. 

Time passes strangely. The seasons change, but her body stays the same. She kills, and she dances, and sometimes in the quiet night she feels as if she's forgetting something important. She is alone, but sometimes she thinks she wasn't always. 

\- 

She kills a man in Rome, a politician, and her heart races inexplicably when she sees the glint of light off metal on the roof across the street. 

There's a ghost in her hotel room, a ghost with a metal arm and empty blue eyes and Natalia thinks _I know him_. 

"Mission report," he demands, accented Russian, and she thinks _I know him_. 

She knows him like she knows her name, knows the way his body moves and the way his breath sounds and she knows him, she _knows_ \- 

Paris. Red red red, she's heard him laugh, knows the taste of his lips and the heat of his breath. He's a ghost story, they call him Death, but she does not fear him. Cigarettes on a rooftop, her first kill, _what is your name?_

James. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557- 

_Steve. His name is-_

We could _run._

She says his name, and he frowns. Her head aches and her knees shake and- 

"What is my name?" She demands. 

"Codename Black Widow," he recites, empty, flat, wrong wrong _wrong_. 

"I know what they call me," angry, yes, hands on his chest, back to the wall, wide blue eyes, yes, _good_ , "what is my _name_?" 

Metal fingers twitch, soft lips part, spark of light in the darkness. "I-" 

"My name," she insists. 

"I don't-" 

"You _do_ ," she promises, stretches up on her toes, kisses his forehead. "You do." 

"Natasha?" he whispers, eyes wide, arms snaking around her waist, fingers digging in. 

_"James,"_ she breathes, buries her face in his neck, pieces of herself she hadn't realized she was missing slotting into place. 

He chokes out her name, again, again, holds on tight. His voice is rough, but his. She wonders how long it's been. "I remember. _Natalia_. I remember. It _hurts_." 

"I know," she soothes. His hair is very soft between her fingers. "I know. I know." 

"They're coming," he says, pulls back to look at her, "they're coming. We should go. Natalia - _Natasha_. We have to go." 

Her heart races. They will take this from them, again, again, as many times as they need to. "Yes," she agrees, "yes." 

\- 

In Ankara, he makes her promise. 

"When they come for us-" he starts, presses his lips to her shoulder, "if they come for us, if they _find_ us, Natasha, you have to go. You have to-" he huffs, frustrated, "you have to let me give you a chance, Natasha. Promise me." 

That's _wrong_. He's everything warm and good and true she's ever known, and the thought of leaving him to them is a knife between her ribs. "James-" 

" _Natasha_ ," he says seriously, looking down at her. "You could live. You could make a life for yourself out here. _Please_ , Natasha. If it comes to that, you have to let me do this. You go, and you live, and you remember for the both of us. _Promise me_." 

"I'll come back for you," she says, stubborn, "I won't leave you there. I _can't_." 

He smiles sadly, presses a kiss to her forehead. "You can," he says, "and you should." 

_"No,"_ she insists, puts her hands on his cheeks and kisses him, soft and chaste. "You aren't what they say you are." 

"Natasha." 

"I won't give up on you. I haven't yet, and I won't start." 

He shakes his head, smiles fond and exasperated. "Okay, паучок. Whatever you say." 

She rolls his eyes and punches him in the shoulder. "And anyway, they won't find us. Not this time. _You_ promise _me_." 

She knows what she's asking, knows he can't make that promise, knows he can't keep it. Selfish. She asks anyway, and he smiles, kisses her pouting lips. 

"Okay. Okay, I promise." 

\- 

Bombay is loud and dirty and _alive_ , and it's easy, almost, to lost themselves in the noise and the chaos of 9 million people who don't know their names, don't know their faces. They are shadows, they are ghosts, they know what they are and it is easy, and hope is like a balloon in Natalia's chest. 

The air is thick and hot and gets in Natalia's blood, chases the Russian cold from her bones, and Natalia smiles. James laughs. Bombay is loud and dirty and _alive_ , and they are _not_ ghosts. Bombay is orange and blue and pink and green and the air tastes like salt, smells like smoke and _life_ and Natalia thinks they could disappear here, in a hundred cities like this one, speak languages that they learn too quickly and be the ghosts they want to be, be more than they were made to be. 

Bombay is loud and dirty and alive and so full of color that Natalia thinks that it just might be enough to chase the red from her m ind. 

Hope is a balloon in her chest, until it is a brick. 

\- 

They take James on the street in the night and he fights, of course he fights, blood and bodies on the sidewalk, but they are too many, and he is only one. 

Natalia watches from the shadows, her heart races and her shoulders tense and her eyes sting and she is afraid, afraid when James fights, afraid when he stops, afraid when he meets her eyes in the dark. 

_We could kill them all_ , she thinks, and her hands shake. James bloody lips quirk into a sad little smile, a reminder, _promise me_ , and Natalia does not cry. She does not think. 

She runs. 

\- 

Hong Kong is loud and dirty and alive, and Natalia is alone. 

\- 

Natalia's world is black and white and red red red, red in her mind and red on her hands and red on sheets, carpets, walls. She moves like a shadow and kills like a skipped heartbeat; she is a ghost story, a warning, a promise. 

They say you will not hear her coming, and that it is better that way. They say she does not speak, does not hesitate, steals the breath from your lungs and the life from your blood like the whisper of the wind. 

They are right. Natalia knows what she is. 

She is a shadow. She is a ghost. She is Death. 

\- 

In Mexico City, there is a man. He tells her that he has orders to kill her, and she wonders why he doesn't. He gives her a choice, and she wonders why he does. 

Natalia knows what she is, and when the nights get too cold, too dark, too long, she wonders if the freedom to choose who's gun she allows herself to be was worth what she lost to get it. The man does not kill her, gives her a choice, and she is tired. She has been alone for so long. 

\- 

They ask her her name, and she tells them Natasha. They ask her why she is here, and she sneers. They ask her where her loyalties lie, and she tells them she does not understand. 

Clint asks her what she wants, and she tells him she doesn't know. He asks her what makes her happy, and she tells him that happiness is a vulnerability, that happiness only means you have something they can take away. 

His eyes are blue and sad and for a moment, she is in Ankara, memories like a knife in her lungs. 

\- 

Time passes. SHIELD clears her for active duty. After her first successful mission as a SHIELD agent, Clint takes her drinking in Paris, and doesn't ask her questions when she cries all over his shirt. He's solid and warm and safe, and she tells him about Russia, about the Bolshoi Theater and the Red Room and how they were twenty-eight before she was alone. She tells him about the red, all the red, about forgetting and remembering and forgetting again, about points of light in the blackness. She tells him that they ran, and then they ran again, that all she knows is killing and running and red, so much red. She tells him that she _knows_ what she is, she _knows_ , but she doesn't know _why_. 

He says her name, and he touches her cheek, and she looks at him. 

"You are more than what they made you," he tells her, "you don't have to be what they say you are just because they say it. You have a choice - you've got nothing but choices. You don't belong to anyone but yourself. Not if you don't want to." 

She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know what she wants. She's been alone for so long. 

"Okay," she says, and he smiles at her. 

"Okay." 

\- 

Clint helps her find an apartment in the city. It's loud and dirty and _alive_ , and it feels like it could be a home. She smiles at her neighbors, she speaks to them in Russian, she eats pierogi from the restaurant down the street. 

There's a cat. She tells him to go home, and he doesn't. She tells him she's no good for him, and he crawls up her leg. She rolls her eyes at him, and he bats at her hand. 

She buys a bag of cat food. She calls him Liho. She tells him that she is _not_ , under any circumstances, adopting him. 

\- 

She's escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, and a bullet takes out her tires not far from Odessa. 

She pulls him out, shields him, sees a glint of metal on a hilltop in the distance, and her heart races. 

She hears the shot a split second before she feels the fire in her side, and the engineer drops behind her. 

She barely even notices the red pooling on the ground, the red dripping down her side. It hurts, and she barely feels it. She doesn't think. She runs. 

\- 

When the nights get too cold and too dark and too long, Natasha wonders if James ever remembers her. She wonders if he knows his name. She wonders where he is, what happened to him after the Soviet Union fell. 

She promised him she would come back for him, but she was _alone_. She'd looked, of course she had, but all she had were rumors, whispers. Points of light in the blackness. 

\- 

She wakes up in a SHIELD infirmary, and Clint smiles at her, dark circles under his eyes and rough uneven stubble on his cheeks. 

"You asshole," he says, and she laughs. It hurts. 

James never misses. James could have killed her with the same shot that took out her engineer. He could have, but he _didn't_. James never misses. 

"Just wait until I tell you the rest of it," she says, and squeezes his hand tight. 

\- 

They search for months, follow years-old leads and long-cold trails, but James is a ghost story, has always been a ghost story. Clint doesn't ask all the questions Natasha can see in his eyes, and Natasha doesn't tell him. He's steadfast and loyal and strong, and Natasha is grateful. She tells him this one night in Moscow, kisses him on the cheek, and smiles at the way it turns pink under her lips. 

\- 

The world does not stop because James is alive. Her life doesn't stop and SHIELD doesn't stop and the missions don't stop. 

It is a good life. A better life than Natasha ever thought she'd get, when she left James to his fate in Bombay. She feels guilt - her SHIELD appointed therapist emphasizes the importance of owning her emotions. She's not sure if guilt is actually an emotion, so much as a state of being. It doesn't ebb and flow like happiness or anger or sadness, it's always here, and she keeps finding new reasons to keep it. She feels guilt about James, about the lives she took for Russia, about the choices she should have made when she thought there were no choices at all. She feels guilt for the way she finds remembering the Red Room with a small degree of fondness - missing the simplicity, missing the certainty of her place, missing James. 

Her life is a good life. The work she does is for a reason, a good reason, and every threat she neutralizes for SHIELD does a little more to offset the guilt she carries. 

It helps, she thinks, to know what you're fighting for. To believe in it. Natasha knows what she is. 

It's a good life, with SHIELD and Clint and the small hope that some day, somehow, she can settle her debt with James, give to him what he gave her all those years ago in Bombay. 

\- 

Natasha is on her way to Russia to extract information from Georgi Luchkov - a Russian arms dealer who's pinged SHIELD's radar and who might also - unofficially - possibly have information on the fate of the Winter Soldier when she gets the call. 

Captain America has been found. Captain America is _alive_. Captain America is currently holed up in a SHIELD facility in New York City with his head spinning, trying to reconcile the seventy years he lost to his long nap in the Arctic. 

Captain America - _Steve Rogers_ \- is alive. The name trigger something in her, a niggling familiarity, but she can't place it. There will be time to dwell on it when she gets back, when she meets him and speaks to him and decides if the shock of his displacement in time is enough to disqualify him from the Initiative. 

She compartmentalizes, sets it aside, ignores the feeling in her gut that this is _important_ , that Steve Rogers is more than just a recovered asset. 

\- 

Two weeks later, she gets another call, and this one annoys her a lot more than the last. She's _working_ , and Luchkov is an _idiot_ , and Natasha is absolutely certain that if he knows anything of James, she'll have it from him within the hour. 

Coulson tells her that they need her. Natasha tells him that she's busy. Coulson tells her that Clint has been compromised, and Natasha sees red red red. 

\- 

She goes back to India. She recruits Bruce Banner. 

\- 

She meets Steve Rogers on a SHIELD helicarrier in the Atlantic, and is immediately impressed by how functional he is, given that two weeks ago, for him, it was 1945. If his head is spinning, if he's overwhelmed, he doesn't show it. 

She likes him right away. 

They're on a quinjet to Germany when the memory comes back like a blow - _Steve. Steve Rogers. His name was Steve._

Natasha's skin prickles and she stares, stares at his strong jaw and the slight crookedness of his nose, his wide shoulders and tiny hips and the coiled strength of his muscles and thinks _a boy, too thin._

_I think he was the only good thing about me._

She knows that Captain America grew up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. She knows that he was small and sickly before he was strong and solid. She knows that he was chosen for Project Rebirth during World War II, that he led an elite unit known as the Howling Commandos from the winter of 1943 until his death in the spring of 1945. She knows that Steve Rogers can't be a particularly uncommon name, but she knows that the timelines match. That Bucky Barnes - _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557_ \- remembered this man while he kissed her scars, that his name gave him the courage to fight, to _run_ , and her stomach twists painfully. 

The world, she thinks, is a cruel place. 

\- 

Steve fights well. Natasha trusts him at her back, admires his strength. He tends toward recklessness, but Natasha understands. Steve Rogers is not a mystery - he has nothing, here, nothing and no one to anchor him. He doesn't know what he's fighting for, only that the fight is all he knows. 

Natasha understands. Natasha aches for him. 

\- 

Clint is a mess. Natasha breaks him out of SHIELD psych after two days and takes him back to Bed Stuy. He puts on sweatpants and shoots arrows at his walls and Natasha drinks coffee out of a chipped mug and doesn't tell him he should talk about it. 

"I don't want to talk about it," he tells her, and she shoves and empty takeout box out of the way with her toes and puts her feet on his coffee table. 

"I didn't ask you to." 

Clint shoots another arrow at his wall. "Is there any coffee left?" 

She looks into her mug, swirls it until the grounds stuck to the sides sink back to the bottom where they belong. "It concerns me that you believe this sludge actually qualifies as coffee, Barton." 

He glares at her and snatches it from her hand and tosses it back in one gulp. Natasha could have stopped him, but she figures it's not that much of a loss. 

He makes more coffee, and she sits on the couch and counts the holes in his walls. 

"I remember all of it, you know. I remember his voice in my head and I remember this niggling suspicion that something wasn't right, that I should probably be fighting harder, but I couldn't remember _why_. Why I should _care_. It was so much simpler being the gun and being the mid that told the finger when to pull the trigger." 

Natasha's chest hurts. She gets up and wraps her arms around his waist and his head hangs and his shoulders are tight and Natasha wishes she could take this from him, that she could stop him ever having to feel it. 

"I know," she says quietly, and he lets out a heavy breath, "believe me, I know." 

"I killed people," he says, "I killed people who didn't deserve it." 

She doesn't tell him it's okay. She knows it isn't, knows it won't help. "It wasn't your choice." 

"That doesn't make me feel better." 

"I know," she says, and he twists around and tucks his face into her shoulder and holds on tight and she runs her fingers through his dirty hair, and they stay like that until the coffee machine starts gurgling. 

"You're alright, Romanoff," he says when he pulls away, dark circles under red eyes. 

Natasha raises her eyebrows. "You're not so bad yourself, Barton." 

Clint snorts, raises the coffee pot in a sloppy approximation of a toast and says, "To the Avengers, world's mightiest heroes. God help us all." 

Natasha rolls her eyes and smiles. "God help us all." 

\- 

Steve disappears after New York, goes to ground somewhere that even Natasha's security clearance doesn't allow her to track. She tells herself she should tell him about James, that he would want to know, but the opportunity never presents itself. 

He improves, adapts, starts to come to grips with what's happened to him. They aren't friends, not really, but Natasha is... reluctant. To drag him backwards. To give him hope where there may not be any. She doesn't know where James is, if he's even still alive, and the James she knew was a long way from the Bucky Steve is still grieving. A part of her thinks that it might be kinder, ultimately, to allow him to grieve the man he lost than shatter the truth he's just learning to accept and give him nothing but a fragile and probably false hope in it's place. Hope is dangerous, she knows, dangerous and painful and Steve... Steve is a good man. Steve has been through enough. 

She thinks, in the end, that this is what James would want. Steve could make a life here. Steve could be okay. 

James would want to give him this. Natasha lets him, and bears her hope alone. 

\- 

Fury is in the hospital, probably will not live through the night, and Natasha is conflicted. 

"Tell me about the shooter," she tells Steve, because she knows James, and Steve was the only one who saw him. She needs to know. 

"He's fast. Strong. Has a metal arm." 

Natasha's body goes cold, even as a warm spark of hope ignites in her belly. 

\- 

She should tell Steve, now, she _should_ , but things move so quickly. After, she promises herself. However this pays out, when it's over, she'll tell him. She'll tell him everything. 

"I know who killed Fury," she says, back against the wall. She knows this anger lives in Steve, but she is not afraid. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years." 

It's more, she knows. More than two dozen. Some are hers. Some are theirs. 

"So he's a ghost story." 

She tells him about Odessa. "Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried. Like you said," she shrugs, "he's a ghost story." 

"Well, let's find out what the ghost wants." 

\- 

The first time she lays eyes on James since Bombay is on a freeway in the middle of D.C., and it feels _wrong_ , somehow, to see him like this. 

This is not how James operates. This is not his purpose. James is a shadow, a ghost, and if HYDRA ( _HYDRA_ , the very same people that Steve had died to defeat all those years ago, and it makes Natasha sick with rage to know that that is where James has been all this time) is using him like this, out in the open, broad daylight, they expect for this to be his end, his swan song, his legacy. 

If they don't mean for this mission to kill him, they mean to do it themselves, after. Natasha quietly wonders what he did to convince them that he was too dangerous for his leash, and thinks that whatever it was, she would undoubtedly approve. 

He tries to kill her, but Natasha knows his body, knows how he moves and how he thinks and how he fights. If he recognizes her at all it doesn't slow him down, doesn't distract him from his mission, and she can't afford sentiment. Not now. She won't kill him, not if she can help it, but she won't let him kill her either. 

James wouldn't want that. She made a promise. 

He gets a bullet in her - _he doesn't miss_ \- and it won't kill her, but it's enough to slow her down. His eyes are empty and angry when she finally meets them and it hurts worse than the bullet, but there isn't time for that, now. 

He's come back before. James always comes back. 

There's blood and pain and red red red, and then Steve is there and god, they're beautiful. She's bleeding and James is not James and Steve doesn't _know_ , but they fight like a dance and Natasha is captivated. James has always done this to her and the years have changed nothing - she knows the lines of his body and the play of his muscles and she knows _him_ , the beautiful broken mind that lives inside the weapon. 

The mask comes off, and the world _stops_. 

"Bucky?" Steve says, and Natasha thinks _no. You're doing it wrong._

"Who the hell is Bucky?" James says - _English_ \- and _god_ , she missed him. 

It's too much. James is confused, _they taught her what fear looks like_ , and Sam is there and Steve is frozen and James draws his gun and Natasha doesn't think, doesn't hesitate, knows what she is and takes her shot and knows it's not over, knows it's what James would have wanted. 

\- 

She doesn't see James again. The days that follow are a blur, too much too fast, blood and adrenaline and red red red, but later, Steve swears Bucky knew him. Later, Bucky pulls Steve from the Potomac and save his life. They bring down the helicarriers and bring down SHIELD and force HYDRA into the open and Natasha herself exposes every dirty secret SHIELD has ever had, including all of her own. 

If what Steve swears is true, if James had dug through the mess of his mind and found Steve waiting, Natasha knows that there's no use searching for him. James will find them when he's ready, and not a moment sooner. 

\- 

She digs up everything she can find on the Winder Soldier project, and what she finds is enough to make her stomach churn. She'd seen, of course, seen the chair and seen the tank and seen the way James looked _after_ , but to see it like _this_ , to see James, her James, Steve's _Bucky_ , reduced to this on the page, _the asset_ and _the subject_ and _it_ and never _him_ , never _he_ , never any indication that James was anything more than a... 

Natasha throws up in the toilet, allows herself three minutes for tears, and continues reading. 

\- 

At Fury's fake grave she gives Steve a neat little file and a kiss on the cheek and a word of advice she knows he won't follow. She understands. James will come in from the cold when he's ready and neither of them will pin him down before he is, but it hasn't stopped her from combing through hacked security footage from all over DC trying to trace his steps and it won't stop Steve from trying to follow him. She understands. 

She doesn't tell him about Russia, about the Red Room, about Paris and Ankara and Bombay. She doesn't tell him, and she feels guilty. He is her friend, now. He deserves to know. Bucky is his as much as James is hers. 

If their places were reversed, she would want to know. 

She doesn't tell him. She doesn't know why. 

\- 

Six weeks after DC, James walks into Avengers tower, lays four knives and three guns at his feet, and raises his flesh hand above his head. 

Natasha watches the security footage later, makes JARVIS play it back to her while she grips Clint's hand so hard his bones creak. 

_I'd put the other one up, but it seems to be malfunctioning_ he says with a lopsided shrug, like there aren't fifteen guns trained on him, and Natasha laughs through the thickness in her throat. She laughs and cries and doesn't stop when the sedative dart hits him in the neck, when he crumples to the marble floor, when SI security swarms him, when they pick up his limp body and carry him away. 

Clint rubs her neck while she calls Steve, while she answers all his questions exactly the same way, _I don't know, I don't know, don't worry, Steve, he's safe, I won't let anything happen to him, no, I don't know, I haven't seen him, he's sedated, Steve, breathe, I don't know I don't know I don't know._

Stark sends a jet for Steve and tells her that James' arm needs to come off, that it's broken, that it's killing him, that it's packed full of fail-safes and kill-switches. She asks him why the hell he's still standing around talking about it. He leaves. 

Clint makes her a drink and doesn't ask her to talk. 

\- 

When James wakes up, he struggles against the restraints at his wrist and chest and ankles, fights and pleads in Russian and his eyes are wide and his muscles are tense and Natasha, Natasha knows what fear looks like. 

Bruce tells him about the arm, tells him he's safe, apologizes for the restraints, but James doesn't seem to hear him. Natasha's hands shake a little as she watches the footage from three floors down, and Clint asks her quietly what she needs, if she wants him to stay, or go, or if she'd like to talk to him, or talk to James, and she doesn't have an answer for him. She doesn't know why James is here, what he knows and what they took and she sees, sees the damage that has been done to him since Bombay, guilt like a knife in her lungs. 

\- 

"What is your name?" Natasha asks gently, and James' eyes roll over and fix on her, clouded and confused and so, so blue. 

He licks his dry lips and closes his eyes. "They call me-" 

"I know. I know what they call you. What is your name?" 

"He called me Bucky," James says, "but he was wrong." 

\- 

Natasha runs her fingers over the strap at James' wrist, folds her hand into his and watches his chest rise and fall steadily. 

Today, James does not know his name. 

His thumb moves over the back of her hand, gentle, and she looks up to find him staring at her. 

"Why are you here?" he asks, and she squeezes his hand. 

"Why are you?" she asks, and he frowns. 

"I-" he pauses, "I didn't know where else to go. It felt. Safe." 

"It is," Natasha promises, "you are." 

"I feel," he says, licks his lips and furrows his brow, frustrated, _god_ , Natasha had missed him, "I _feel_. Why are you _here_?" 

"You know," Natasha says. 

"I don't. _Why_ -" 

"You _do_ ," Natasha interrupts. 

"I shot you," he spits, and lets go of her hand. 

"Yes." 

"Then _why_ -" 

"You know," Natasha says, grabs his chin and makes him meet her eyes, "you _know_. You shot me, and here I am. Why?" 

"I don't _know_ ," he growls, and Natasha kisses his forehead, gentle. 

"You do." 

\- 

Steve does not cry when he sees him. His skin pales and his jaw tightens but he does not cry, and Natasha admires him. 

"Can I see him?" he asks her, as if she's any sort of authority. As if they aren't all just making it up as they go along, as if any of them know what they're doing. 

"That's up to you, Steve," she tells him quietly. 

"I need to. I need to see him," he says, takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders, "Is he-? Does he-?" 

"I don't know," Natasha says, "you read his file. I don't know how much he remembers. I don't know if he knows you." 

Steve nods, tense. "Okay. That's... okay." 

Natasha watches through the glass as Steve slips inside, curled in on himself. 

"Buck?" he asks, quiet, tentative, and James just sighs, looks _tired_. 

"I'm not him. I don't know... you weren't here. You weren't supposed to be here." 

Steve sits down next to the bed, undeterred. "I came as soon as I heard." 

"You shouldn't have," James says, "I'm not him." 

"You are," Steve says, "Whatever, whoever else you've been, you are." 

"I don't know you," James says, "I wish. I wish I could be him." 

Steve takes James' hand, and James stares at it. "If you aren't him, then who are you?" 

James looks up at him, eyes wide. "I don't know." 

\- 

"The Captain - _Rogers_ \- says I'm Bucky. And if... I might be. There are things... I might be. Bucky Barnes. But if I _am_ -" he pauses, takes a shaky breath, "he's dead. Steve Rogers is dead. There's no way- even if he didn't die in the war, it's been _seventy years_." 

Natasha squeezes his hand, and he squeezes back. "Steve isn't dead. He is who he says he is." 

"And me?" James asks, looking at her seriously, "Am I who he says I am?" 

She smiles, sad, and rubs her thumb over his knuckles. "Only you can decide who you are." 

\- 

"I shot you," James says. 

"Yes," Natalia confirms. James frowns. His eyebrows furrow. 

"I remember-" he pauses, licks his lips, "I think I. I _know_ you. How?" 

Natasha's heart beats faster. "You know how." 

He makes a noise, frustrated, and curses her in Russian. 

"English," she says, nudges him gently, and his eyes widen. 

"You-" he breathes, shakes his head. " _You_." 

Hope feels like a balloon in her chest. "You remember?" 

He looks lost for a moment, shakes his head slowly. "Some. Pieces. They-" he takes a shuddering breath, "it got worse, after. _Natalia_." 

"I tried to find you," she says in a rush, "I _tried_. After Odessa, and- I looked for you. You were _gone_." 

"I _told_ you-" 

"I know what you told me. But you- I _saw_ , James. What they... I couldn't. You _knew_ that." 

He shakes his head, smiles a little and cracks Natasha's chest wide open, the way he always has. "Stop this, паучок," he touches her shoulder, her neck, tips their heads together, "you _made_ it. You remembered for the both of us." 

Natasha lets out a breath. "We both did. And you remembered for yourself." 

"I-" 

"You _did_ ," she insists, takes his face between her hands and stares him down. "What is your name?" 

James smiles. He tells her. 

\- 

"Do you think I should cut it?" James asks her quietly. Natasha runs her fingers through his hair again, scratches gently at his scalp. It's clean, and soft – James showers a lot. Turns the water up as hot as it will go and stands under the spray until he's all red and wrinkly. Natasha understands. 

"Do you _want_ to cut it?" she asks, and James' eyebrows crinkle up a little. Natasha smoothes the wrinkle between them away with her thumb, watches his face relax, feels his head get a little heavier in lap as the tension leaves him. He doesn't sleep much – none of them do, really. 

"I don't know," he says, blows out a breath and licks his lips, "I think Steve misses the way it was, you know. _Before_." 

She smiles a little and tugs on his hair, just once. His lips quirk. "You're an idiot if you think the way you wear your _hair_ is even on the list of things that really matter to Steve Rogers." 

"Natalia." 

It's remarkable, really. There are moments – when Natasha walks into a room and sees James and Clint signing rudely at each other and sees the lovestruck awe on Steve's face as he watches them, or when James and Steve get to sparring in the gym, Sam and Clint rolling their eyes and placing bets, or at 3am with James' head in her lap, Steve sleeping in the next room and Clint sprawled out in her bed down the hall – that Natasha can't quite believe that this is her life. _Their_ life. That after all the years and miles and forces outside their control working tirelessly to keep them apart they've all ended up _here_. She struggles, still, with feeling like she doesn't deserve it. Like she doesn't deserve _them_. Like it's the Bolshoi all over again, and one day she'll wake up to the cold and grey and wonder if it ever happened at all. 

She suspects it's the same for James. 

"Steve doesn't care about your hair," she says quietly, "Steve loved you when he was tiny and sickly in Brooklyn and he loved you when you were one-armed and filthy and didn't remember his name and he loves you now, in your tac gear or one of your obnoxious Captain America t-shirts, on the days when you speak Russian and the days when you're Bucky-from-Brooklyn. Steve knows exactly who you are, James, what you've done and what you've been through. You could dye your hair bright pink and Steve would still look at you like you hung the moon." 

James swallows, covers his eyes with his flesh hand and takes a few deep breaths. 

"Besides," she says, smiling a little, "I'm sure Steve has noticed that keeping it long has it's perks." She tightens her fist in his hair and pulls, just to demonstrate her point, and James lets out a startled laugh. 

"You fight dirty, паучок," James says, cracking his eyes open and looking up at her. 

"Learned from the best," she says, grinning, and James takes her hand, kisses the back of it and tucks it against his chest. 

"I don't deserve you," he says. 

Natasha smoothes his hair back. "Of course you do." 

He doesn't quite believe her, but it's nice to say it anyway. She thinks he needs to hear it. 

When Steve's door opens a few minutes later, Natasha scratches at James' scalp and says, "You could always just ask him, you know." 

"Ask me what?" Steve yawns, shuffling over and ducking down to peck James on the lips. 

"James is thinking about cutting his hair," Natasha says, smiling, and Steve _glares_. 

"Don't you _dare_." 

* * *

epilogue

* * *

  


  


Bucky doesn't get it all back at once, privately thinks he probably won't get it all back at all. He told Natalia once that his memory was like points of light in the blackness - little windows to all the lives he's lived, all the people he's been. He sees more now, details and sharp edges, but he doesn't see everything. Dark patches in the light. 

He remembers some things. He remembers the scars on Natalia's belly - the one he put there, the one he didn't. He remembers red on her hands, red on her lips, remembers her thighs wrapped around his hips, and also around his neck. He remembers Steve, remembers remembering Steve. Remembers when they took his arm, when they took _him_. Remembers screaming and laughing and fighting and touching and running, how Natalia looked at him just how Steve did, stubborn and fearless and strong. He remembers Brooklyn, some, like an old film more than a memory. Steve with bloody teeth and Natalia with bloody knuckles, wanting to shield them both with his body from everything that would do them harm, a million snapshot moments cobbled together like a patchwork quilt in his mind. 

Steve claps a big hand on his flesh shoulder, and Bucky remembers it smaller, sharper, clawing at his shoulder blade, pleasure deep in his belly. Natalia tosses him a knowing smirk and James remembers the cold floor at his back, the dull ache in his muscles, the softness of her pink lips, the sweat-damp feel of her hair in his fingers. Natalia says something that makes Steve blush, and Bucky remembers just how far that pink will spread down his chest. 

\- 

"Does he know?" Bucky asks one morning, a pair of Steve's old sweats hanging off his hips. 

Natalia - Natasha - shrugs. "He must have figured out that there's... history. He's not an idiot." 

"You haven't told him?" Bucky asks, and Natalia looks at him sharply. 

"Neither have you." 

Bucky huffs. "You've been back a lot longer than I have." 

Natalia rolls her eyes at him. "He's not the love of _my_ life, Barnes," and Bucky opens his mouth, but Natasha sighs and cuts him off before he starts, "I didn't know, at first. That he was _that_ Steve. Didn't remember for a long time - you're not the only one with blank spots. But then I did, and it seemed... cruel. He wasn't doing very well, and you were. I didn't know where or _what_ you were, anymore. I meant to tell him. I just. Didn't know how. His Bucky was not the James I knew, and hope can be far more painful than grief." 

Bucky's chest feels tight. Steve still loo ks at him like he's a ghost sometimes, like he'll disappear if Steve blinks or turns his back, maybe even if he doesn't. Steve is still grieving, grieving the world he knew, the Bucky he lost in the Alps. 

Bucky isn't that person, but Steve isn't who he was either. 

"He deserves to know," Bucky says, voice rough. 

"Yes," Natasha agrees, "he does." 

\- 

"I remembered you," Bucky says one evening, leaning against the counter in Steve's apartment while Steve cooks them spaghetti. Bucky still hasn’t gone outside, but Steve's friends mostly trust him with the tower; JARVIS will tattle on him immediately if he steps out of line, and Bucky thinks that probably does more for his own piece of mind than it does for theirs. 

Steve looks up from his cooking, raises his eyebrows and waits for Bucky to continue. 

Bucky takes a deep breath. "Natalia - _Natasha_ \- has this scar. On her belly. I couldn't remember your name - most of the time I couldn't remember my own - but I remembered you, sometimes. In flashes. More what..." he pauses, clears his throat, "more what you made me feel than anything-" he waves vaguely "concrete? But I would get flashes. Anyway. Natasha has a scar on her belly, and one day I was... You remember, Stevie, how you used to get in all those fights and I'd bring you home and strip you off and lay you out and clean you up and you'd make some cheeky little comment about me kissing it better?" 

Steve's eyes crinkle as he smiles, fond. "Yeah, Buck. Wiped that smirk off my face real quick the first time you actually did," he pauses, eyebrows knitting together, "You said... you. You knew Natasha?" 

Bucky lets out a heavy breath. "I _trained_ Natasha. I. The scar. On her belly. It was fresh, all pink and new and I kissed it, and I _remembered_ you. Your name, your face. Your voice. What we- what you were to me. They... when you put that plane down? They told me you were _dead_ , Steve. They showed me the newsreels, the reports. And then they-" he gestures vaguely at his head and shrugs, "they took a lot from me. You especially. Natasha - she was Natalia, then, I. I think I was the first person that ever called her Natasha - she was all I had, for a while. Stubborn. Like you. Refused to let me forget who I was." 

Steve is quiet for a long moment. "And then what happened?" he asks quietly, and Bucky stares at him. "You remembered me. And then what?" 

Bucky exhales, his skin prickling with... he doesn't know. "We ran. That day. We ran, and we made it to Paris. Then they made us forget. We didn't know each other for a long time, I don't think. They... everything after Paris is just pieces, Steve. But. The second time, I remember-" he rubs at his temples; remembering makes his head hurt. "You know about the chair." 

"Yes," Steve says. 

"After the first time, they used it more. It's harder to remember. The second time, I made it to... India? And Natalia. _Made_ it." 

"She left you?" 

Bucky looks at him sharply. "I made her promise." 

Steve sucks in a breath. "You _let_ them take you. To give her a chance." Steve's eyes are wide and shiny and Bucky shifts, uncomfortable. " _Bucky_." 

Bucky doesn't say anything, doesn’t know what there is to say. He remembers - remembers catching Natalia's eyes in the shadows, remembers smiling at her. Remembers watching her disappear into the dark as the sedative started to work, remembers being _glad_. 

He remembers throwing himself in front of bullets for her. For Steve, before that. Knows with absolute certainty that he would still, that whatever they took from him, they couldn't take this. 

He thinks maybe _that_ is what Bucky is. 

"Bucky," Steve says, and he's very close now. Bucky didn't notice him move. His hands are warm on Bucky's shoulder, the back of his neck. "You loved her. " It's not a question, and yet. 

Bucky licks his lips and nods, looks at Steve's mouth because it's easier than looking at his eyes. "In all the ways something like me could love a person. Yes." 

Steve tips his chin up gently. "Some _one_ ," he says, leans in very slowly, very deliberately, and presses his lips to Bucky's with his eyes wide open. "You are not a _thing_." 

Bucky's mind is blissfully blank. He touches his lips with his fingers. "I was." 

"You _weren't_ ," Steve insists, and Bucky smiles. Just like Natasha. Steve smiles back, small. "What?" 

Bucky kisses him. "I missed you." 

Steve's face goes all soft, and his fingers flex on the back of Bucky's neck. "Oh, Buck." Steve pulls him into a hug, and Bucky wraps his arm around Steve's waist and buries his face in his neck. 

"I'm glad," Steve says, "I'm glad you weren't alone. Both of you. I'm glad that you both. Made it." He pulls back and looks Bucky in the eye. "You're incredible, you know that?" 

Bucky feels too warm, fidgets a little. "No. 'm not." 

"You are," Steve insists, "You _are_."

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it! 
> 
> Most of the Russian is via google translate and my own super ( **super** ) rudimentary understanding of how Russian works. I have no idea if it's grammatically accurate or if these are the right words or if they're even words at all. That being said, my intentions with the Russian were:
> 
> паучок: diminutive form of the Russian word for 'spider' - basically 'little spider' in English.  
> идти: 'go' or 'go now'  
> молодец: along the lines of 'good girl/boy' or 'well done'  
> Хорошо: 'good'  
> снова: 'again'
> 
> If you speak Russian and I very very clearly butchered the hell out of it please let me know - like I said, any understanding I have of Russian is super rudimentary.
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
